


To the Victor

by roughmagic



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, Oral Sex, Other, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Battle, Reader-Insert, Vanilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:26:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic
Summary: You’ve just made it through the Trials of Osiris and returned with your fireteam to the Tower as worn-out winners. Waiting to congratulate you is Lord Shaxx, and he’d like to reward you… however you’d like.Shaxx/Reader





	To the Victor

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a Twine/CYOA game that I wrote a long time ago, posted on Tumblr for like .5 seconds before deleting it and the blog I'd made for my Twine stuff... There were a couple different paths and you could tap out at any time—it was a fun and silly little project, and I realized I liked the writing enough to go back and give it a little TLC and develop it into a one-shot. That, and I mean, I’m just thirsty for Shaxx.
> 
> It was fun to revisit, it’s kind of like a little Destiny 1 time capsule. The couches, Mercury being mysterious, mentions of bounties… it was written pre-Rise of Iron, maybe even pre-Taken King, so it takes place in those early days.

Winners and losers both got to sit on the couches, if they’d had a long day. 

Today, though, you had won. You had won the Trials.

Mercury’s dust is still sterile and caked into your bootsoles, and when you close your eyes, Sol is still huge and bright on the backs of your eyelids. The inside of your helmet smells like melted wax and ozone and gunfire, and the Tower seems deathly silent, although you know it’s just a lull. A quiet night cycle. Nothing much going on, other than you and your team sacked out like victorious, deadly bags of potatoes on Lord Shaxx’s couches. 

Gympie-23 and Forrest are finally quiet, just as you are. You’d had time enough to compare winnings and scream and shout and celebrate, and the reality of the very long, very painful Trials had sunk in. It didn’t seem real that it was over. Any moment now, Lord Shaxx would return from talking to Zavala and tell you to get up, on your feet, next round, Guardians. 

“When are they going to be done?” Forrest mutters, sliding from sitting up against the couch to laying down horizontal across it. 

Gympie makes a ribbed sighing sound, scratchy from a recently-burst-and-repaired vocalizer. “A deep-memory analysis can take a while, even with Ghosts. With what we saw on Mercury, the Tower wants to be sure they get it all.”

“The Speaker, you mean.”

“Go to sleep.”

You drag a hand over your face, willing yourself to talk. That’s a lot of effort, though. And it’d be a sight easier to just stay quiet. Maybe pass out. You’d heard those two chatter for so long you can almost predict what they’ll say next. 

“Guardians,” Lord Shaxx says, voice carrying and stern as ever and you find yourself on your feet in the same automatic motion as Gympie and Forrest rising as well. The Titan’s boots echo across the hall as he returns, his own Ghost curling from one shoulder to another, blinking at you. You miss yours, with a sudden pang. 

He comes to a stop, arms folded across his chest. “Your Ghosts will return to you before sunrise. For now, you should get some rest. You’re no good to us dead on your feet.” The man pauses, considering something. “The Trials are… brutal. I’m proud of you all.”

You can read the shuffling of Gympie’s feet and the way Forrest’s chin lifts a little: that praise meant a lot. You suppose you must be as equally transparent to them, and probably the same to Shaxx. 

The Handler’s helmet dips slightly, single horn glinting. “Dismissed.”

Gympie collapses back on the leather couch, probably already asleep, and Forrest claps you on the shoulder wordlessly before stumbling away. Your quarters are close together, you should put off turning in your bounties and follow him to make sure he doesn’t pass out somewhere and frighten a sweeping frame. 

Rousing yourself to leave, you make it around the edge of the low table before Shaxx touches your shoulder. “Hold a moment, Guardian.”

“Sir?”

Shaxx’s helmet lowers a touch, as if behind it he’s getting a better look at you. “I wanted to speak to you about the Trials.”

You don’t know what you had been expecting, but it makes your heart sink anyway. That’s all anyone would want to talk to you about for a while, probably. “What do you want to know, Lord Shaxx?”

“I’ll hear enough about it later.” There’s what might’ve been a smile in his voice, although it’s gone quickly. “I spoke to your fireteam.”

A prickle of warning or discomfort makes you frown. There had only been a few moments since your return to Earth that you’d been away from them, and you hadn’t thought you’d been that distracted. “Without me, sir?”

“They told me you took the brunt of a few rounds. That you carried them in others.”

Something about the intensity of how he says it makes you feel like blushing. “I only did as much as they would’ve done for me.”

“I know,” he says, gently, and then doesn’t say anything at all.

You lift your chin up to fake more energy and more bravado than you’ve got left. “… What’s this about, sir?”

He leans back, settling his weight on his heels as he folds his arms over his chest again. “I’ve lost good friends to the Trials. During, and after. I want to keep an eye on you, Guardian.”

“Sir? We won. I feel fine—”

“And what about when you’re alone.” He doesn’t say it like a question. More like an accusation. 

You’re swamped vividly with the idea of going back to your quarters, cold and unlived in for so long, how overwhelming it would be to be faced with the effort of taking off your armor, making yourself eat something, and trying to sleep, alone. In this awful silence. 

What he meant by losing friends after the Trials has sunk in. It would be easier not to deal with trying to be out of the Trials, it would be easier to just go back in. Or go anywhere else.

No one ever warns you about this. They just show off their armor and gossip about Osiris. 

You sigh, and grinds the heels of your gloves into your eyes. “I want to take a bath, and then I want to sleep for a thousand years.”

Shaxx makes a noise like a soft snort, uncrossing his arms and pushing gently against your shoulder armor. “Come on, then.”

 

Maybe it’s just the sort of day you’ve had, but you get all the way to Lord Shaxx— you know, Lord Shaxx, _Handler of the Crucible_ —’s quarters before it sinks in that any of it’s real. 

His room seems like a dream, certainly. There’s an entire wall of glass, a window panorama that looks out over the City, the Traveler’s bottom curve moonlike in the distance. It’s night, but all the lights are still going. The City rarely sleeps. 

Everything is austere: there look to be a few side closets, but other than the gorgeous display of weaponry attached to the far wall, the room is massive and unbroken by walls or rooms. Towards the window there’s a single square bed with a nightstand and lamp. To the far end of the room, there’s a lavatory, complete with a walk-in shower. Something runs down your back and curls up into your guts. The whole place could be carved out of one giant slab of dark marble.

“Do you do this for everyone in the Trials, or am I just special?” you ask weakly, too tired to consider your manners.

“Armor off, Guardian.” Shaxx says, and you give up trying to fight whatever’s going on. You might still be back on the couch, drooling into the leather and dreaming this. Or it could be real, and you could be mechanically undoing your armor and handing it off to Shaxx, getting ready to use his shower to take a bath. Without your Ghost to manage the transmat, it’d be too much trouble to ask his to do it, so it’s all manual. 

Eventually everything is gone except for your body sheath, and Shaxx leaves before making you strip completely naked. You might as well be, though. You haven’t been out of your armor with anyone else in the room for a very long time. You wish your Ghost was here. Or his.

You watch him retreat to one of the barely-visible doors, opening it up into a small workshop, a warm orange light spilling over a surprisingly messy workbench. He lays your armor out carefully, and it’s too much to watch someone else handle your skin that way. 

The shower is still waiting, the four tall glass walls only marked by a single indent and hinges for the door. You strip out of the sheath and let it pool on the floor before stepping in, shutting the glass pane behind you. A little control springs up against the glass at your touch, and you hesitantly twist the glowing dial one way, jumping as warm water falls from the ceiling with the same pressure as a heavy spring rain, and you laugh before you can catch yourself. You haven’t felt real rain on your face in— God, almost as long as you haven’t had your armor off in front of someone else. It feels wonderful, and you scrub yourself clean with your hands.

You lose track of time in the methodical process of cleaning yourself, finding it’s grounded you in a way you hadn’t expected it would. There’s something comforting being reminded of your body, of cleaning it after a job well done. You do the same for your guns, it shouldn’t be such a leap to do it for yourself. 

Twisting the controls again to turn the shower off, you step out hesitantly, although the slight dip in the floor keeps all the water running back down towards the drain. The glass is fogged over, and where you’d left your sheath is a large towel. 

Wrapping up, you’re surprised it’s as soft as it is. You’d always expected him to be a bit more spartan, although you aren’t complaining now. 

“Feel better, Guardian?” Shaxx asks, drawing your attention back towards the direction of the window. It looks strange, to see him silhouetted there against the lights of the city, instead of the dimly lit corner before the Vanguard’s hall. 

You consider the thought he’s seen you naked carefully, like a new artifact in your inventory. 

“I do, actually.”

“Good.” He crosses the room to another closet set into the wall, pulling a plain cloth robe from it and approaching you. He moves quietly, even in full armor and on this marble floor. 

“You didn’t answer me, before.” You keep your eyes fixed on the City, watching the slow and rhythmless glitter. “Do you do this for everyone who wins the Trials?”

“Maybe you _are_ just special.” Shaxx pulls the robe around your shoulders like he knows the towel won't be enough to keep you warm, and although his tone is that of a joke, you have a hard time believing it is. 

You smile anyway, wryly. “Hmm. You shouldn’t mock me. I’m too tired.”

“I can tell.” His voice is much softer this time, and it draws your eyes to him again. 

“Lord…?” 

“I want to reward you,” he says, lowly, as if the room isn’t empty save for the two of you. 

Stupidly, for a moment you think that you’ve got all the guns you could ever want, at least for the moment. “For winning?”

“For coming home.”

That stops you— but not stopped cold. Closer to warm, actually, and things have clicked too loudly into place for you to keep dodging the truth of it. That truth being that Lord Shaxx— a man you’ve respected, a legend in his own right, is putting himself at your disposal. You feel dizzy at the thought of it, and his hands go to your elbows like he can tell you’re unsteady. 

“Tell me what you want, Guardian,” he says, soft and urgently, the same quiet and personal tone that’s driven you back onto your feet in the last moments of a Crucible match. The sound of him wanting something from you that he knows you can give.

You set your hands on top of his gauntlets, reaching back to move his grip to your waist. There’s no hesitation there in the way he holds on— and nothing too ginger, either. He’s watched you. He knows what you’re made of. 

When you close the space between the two of you, there’s the slightest shift in his body language, like you might be dangerous. It strikes you that this must be decidedly out of Shaxx’s element, and he’s making a special effort just for you. This gentleness, this opening up of his quarters, letting you into his space… 

Your hands creep farther up his gauntlets, towards the fur on his pauldrons and his thick fabric collar. There’s a definite change in the way he holds himself, but you can’t read it. “Is this crossing any lines you don’t like?”

There’s a shift in his hips and a slight increase of his grip on your waist, which you like. “None at all.”

“And you’re not just doing this to be nice to me?”

“No.”

It’s such a blunt answer, you smile a little, tracing the lower rim of his helmet, maybe a little deliberately coy. “Won’t say anything more than that?”

“Shouldn’t have to.” With one last squeeze, his hands duck inside the robe and run down your bare sides, the brazen touch sending sparks through your guts. “If you change your mind, sing out.”

You grin, bumping yourself against the cold front of his armor. “Yes sir.”

He grabs you properly this time, filling his hands with the thickest parts of your flank and squeezing, well and truly firm this time. Shaxx pushes forward just a bit, the vocalizer under the chin of his helmet buzzing a touch at this close range. “How do you want it, Guardian?”

You fight with yourself over your answer for a moment, but eventually you opt for the honest answer. “I’d like to keep it simple, if that’s alright.”

There’s the slightest hint of a smile when he answers. “When I said ‘anything,’ I wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Then… May I…?” You lift your hands up to the seals of his helmet near his jaw, fingertips hovering over the releases.

He’s very quiet for a moment, and you’re afraid you might’ve overstepped a bound, but his hands run up to your ribs before settling back down at your waist, as if he’s made up his mind. “Go on.”

It’s a strange angle to be taking someone’s helmet off at, but you manage. You pull it off carefully, and stare at it in your hands for a moment, before looking up at him. Really looking up at him. All the rumors are true. You could stare for a long time, but he seems distracted. 

A muscle twitches in Shaxx’s cheek, but he never breaks eye contact, even as his hands lift to frame your face. “May I?”

“Please,” you murmur, halfway into the kiss already. The front of his armor is cold when you press up against it, but you fall into the soft, probing feel of his mouth on yours and feel good enough and warm enough to liquefy and sink through the cracks in his armor until you find him. 

Pulling away, you hold on to the lingering taste and smell of him and resist the urge to start again, and spend the entire night kissing him. The fact that he’d let you is too tempting as it is. 

“You’ve had a long fight,” Shaxx says, voice low and quiet and totally unfiltered by the helmet, close enough to find you on warm gusts of breath. “If you’re tired…”

“I trust you to take care of me.”

“Good,” he mutters, slipping an arm around your waist and just about lifting you in a turn towards the bed, his mouth close to your ear when your knees brush the bedside.

“Lay down, Guardian.”

You’re happy to, the bed softer than you might have expected it to be. Getting comfortable in the middle, you’re aware of him watching you, and make sure to return the favor as you watch him take off his armor. You ache with the suddenly impulse to touch yourself, to let him watch you enjoy watching him, but he’s too quick with the armor. Not rushing, but automatically releasing the seals and stacking it by the bedside is a fast, practiced process for him. 

When he shrugs out of the underarmor sheath and climbs onto the bed towards you, you can’t stop yourself from rising a little to meet him, sighing into another kiss as you finally touch him— his hands, his skin, his body warmth. As he comes to rest loosely between your legs, he tugs gently and loosens the towel from around your body, with the exact cadence of a man unwrapping a gift. Your face heats up as you watch him, his hands touching your stomach and waist as if he’s examining something beautiful. 

Without any preamble, Shaxx ducks his head to kiss your collarbone, one of your hands skating over the curve of his skull and anchoring there, following his process as he moves lower to your chest, then down your stomach to your navel, and the bed shifts as he settles he weight further down. You take in a deep breath as his hands divide your legs and pull them apart, hooking them both over his shoulders. 

For a moment, all you have is his breath against your entrance, before he ducks closer and finally puts his mouth on you, and all your thoughts about keeping quiet and controlled fall away. You arch up against him and he makes a pleased noise, big hands roaming your legs, encouraging you to press your thighs around his face. It takes everything you have not to rock your hips against him, although you know that you could, but he pulls away at the last second, a lewd sucking sound making you gasp as he wets his fingers in his mouth. 

There’s a moment where you tremble before the callused pads of his fingertips touch you, plying you open and slipping inside. You feel them curl, briefly, but it’s too much. You come quickly and suddenly, gasping and holding time to him— Shaxx puts his lips against you in a rush and you feel them move in a soft curse, and you ride the short, wracking tremors against his face until you’re finished. 

He untangles himself from your legs, making a point to lick his fingers and scrub a hand over his face, but he still smells like you as he leans down, voice hot and low against your neck, the slightest bit out of breath. “Do you want something else, Guardian?”

“Mm.”

“You’ll have to tell me.”

“Come inside me.”

As he pulls back his head tilts just a touch, as if he hadn’t actually expected you to say it. He kisses you again, and your own taste is thick on his tongue. You curl your arms around his neck and keep him close even as he leans up and over to the bedside drawer, kneading a package of heat-soluble lubricant in his palm. 

You don’t feel like you need it, but the messiness of it as he slicks the both of you up with it is new and charming. Your eyes drift shut of their own accord as he rubs the length of his cock along your entrance, heavy, silky with lubricant.

“You’re running hot,” Shaxx murmurs, his hand wedging itself between your bodies and guiding the head of his cock to you, and the hesitant press of it is going to drive you wild.

Squirming, you push up against his weight, trying to seat him inside you, anything to get him inside you. “ _Please,_ Shaxx…”

“Don’t beg. Not you. You’re the victor, tonight. You get everything you want.” He breathes it against your neck as he pushes in, and your whole body goes taut along his, heels digging into his back and your breath trapped in your throat until he bottoms out. 

You want to tell him what a nice thought that is, how good this feels and how much you appreciate him, but all that makes it out are moans, slurred half-words and you’re wound up with the idea that even just being filled like this is probably going to make you come again. 

Shaxx loops an arm around your waist and seems to curl up slightly, canting your hips up and resting your weight on his thighs. As he draws out and starts the first slow thrust back in, you give up on trying to hold on. The heat and weight and friction is overwhelming, and you let yourself sink into the sensations, until there’s nothing left but the boiling lulls between stars, and the blinding peaks that you lose track of.

One last cry makes it out of you as he comes, arms looping around you to crush you to him until his hips slow, then settle to a stop, and the rest of him relaxes. You love the rise and fall of his chest against yours, the feeling of being pressed out long and close to someone else. 

When he pulls out, you feel a pang of overstimulation that passes quickly, warmth and slick oozing behind it. Shaxx is breathing hard, chest working like bellows and you adore it. His tired trail of kisses up your body end at your collarbone, where he’d started. 

You frame his face in your hands and pull him up to look at you, just as tousled and flushed as you feel. “I made it,” you say, for no reason you can put your finger on, other than it’s the truth, and it feels right. 

“Yeah,” Shaxx says reverently, running the backs of his knuckles across your cheek. “Welcome home.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you’d like to play the original game, the download for the HTML thing is [available right here.](http://www.mediafire.com/file/4txqovax54mnrz6/To+The+Victor.zip) Please note: there are some consistency errors, minor spelling/grammar/tense things, and a couple of crossed wires with the end of the Awoken/Human paths, depending on which way you go. It’s not super polished, but it might be fun? If you check it out, please let me know what you think!
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! I’m working on another fic these days, but I wanted to share this and have fun reminiscing. ;)


End file.
